


For As Long As You'll Have Me (Though There Might Not be Enough Time)

by ebonynemesis



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Brainwashing, F/M, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Post CA:CW, Red Room, The Natasha movie we never got, Unreliable Narrator, mind wiping, pre A:IW
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 13:10:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ebonynemesis/pseuds/ebonynemesis
Summary: Natasha finds a name, a past, losses, and more.





	For As Long As You'll Have Me (Though There Might Not be Enough Time)

PROLOGUE

In the debris that was once his safe-house in Warsaw she finds the faux leather notebook he kept in which his scrawling handwriting, complete with ligatures of the pre-keyboard era, dot-points each precious memory in an unordered list that went on for pages and pages and pages.

She flips it and stops towards the end. In red, he had written _‘Yelena Belova’_ in cyrillic, and in pencil he had jotted down _‘BW’_ , _‘RR’_ along the margins, followed by a dozen or so question marks.

A phantom pain pierces her bullet-scar. She touches it through her suit, pressing the round, roughened piece of flesh. She remembers his eyes when he shot her, or rather, shot her charge, right through her. The freezing grey crisp, like the eyes of a winter-wolf.

It had evoked something familiar and metallic within her: the smell of her wrist after it had been cuffed to the bed all night, the steel cart she was placed on when they shoved her into the operation room.

She had thought that dreams of those eyes were mere remnants of unabsorbed adrenaline — vapor trails of past sojourns, like her dreams of hazy red and bulky green. Now, grazing her fingers across the grooves of the red letters across the page, she frets the distinction between memory and conjured past.

 _Do you know what it’s like for someone to take you out of your head,_ Clint had asked her, _and stuff something else back in._

This is what they pull out. This is the filling that’s been scooped from the inside of James Buchanan Barnes’ head. This is what he’s trying to stuff back in.

As for her own fillings, Natasha doesn’t know if the name in red might be a prodigal herring, or an actual clue.

* * *

1.

There is nothing left of the program. She can’t find a trace of it. All the red bricked Stalinist row-houses have long disappeared. Even the road names are different, many reverting to their pre-USSR name. Natasha wanders through the city of Moscow for days, occasionally coming across a building corner with a familiar silhouette or a recognisable ray of sunlight not substantive enough for her to determine if it’s a clue to the reality of her past.

Meanwhile the name remains elusive. Yelena Belova — there are five hundred counts of that name recorded in the year 1984 alone. She tracked down more than a hundred of them, their lives all too crowded and occupied to be anything but ordinary. Right now, she sits outside the daycare of where Yelena number one hundred and sixty seven is playing the piano to a dozen or so preschoolers. The tune simple, yet complex in a way Natasha cannot comprehend.

She’s ready to leave when she is swarmed by a sudden outpouring of children. She braces herself as they rush around her legs towards the minivans and the open arms of their au-pairs. Their teacher follows them, and gives Natasha a smile before whipping her head around for a second look at Natasha’s face.

Natasha half turns to her. ‘My niece is here. I’m just checking to see how she’s doing on my brother’s behalf. He’s still fighting for her custody. But I better leave before the mother finds out I’m here.’

Yelena replies with a somewhat saddened smile: ‘Mm. Rominski, oh I suppose it’s Ms. Vatlova now, is not an — shall we say agreeable woman.’

‘I’m surprised you’re so forthright with opinions.’

Yelena shrugs, her brown hair falls straight and curls just below her nape and when she moves a small scar can be seen on the back of her ear: ‘Anna has had three absences in the past fortnight alone, and when she is here she no longer joins in on the singing or plays with others. The divorce is not easy on her.’

‘I am sorry to hear that.’

Yelena acknowledges Natasha’s feigned regret with a small smile. ‘I’m glad to hear at least Mr. Rominski is not giving up.’

She’s wearing thick woollen socks beneath her long skirt, and the knitting has come loose in several parts. Natasha does not see a wedding ring.

‘You know, you bear a striking resemblance to someone I know, well, someone I that know of.’

Natasha tilts her head: ‘Do I?’

‘Yes, my grandfather named me after her actually. He raised me, you see,’ she reaches into the pocket of her cardigan and takes out her phone, ‘like many post-Gorbachev families I grew up without a mother or a father. My grandfather refused for me to have either of their names. So I was named after his wife — his first wife that is. They were only married for a short while after the war before she passed away. She was not my biological grandmother, but she was the love of my grandfather’s life. He still keeps a photo of her on the mantle.’

Yelena shows her a scanned photo of a woman in her early twenties with blond, curly hair that’s pinned back from her temples. Natasha clenches her hands into fists in her leather jacket, resisting the urge to subdue the kindergarten teacher and take her phone. The woman in the photo is another Natasha, however impossible it may be, down to the slight ridge on her left nostril.

Natasha smiles. ‘What a coincidence. It’s like me with a retro filter.’

‘It’s why I did a double take when I saw you. I was surprised at how much you look like the woman I greet everyday before I eat my breakfast.’ Yelena frowns. ‘You know, I’m surprised that Anna’s aunt has auburn hair when she’s so blond.’

‘Recessive genes, maybe,’ Natasha says, ‘It was good talking to you Ms. Balova, please keep looking out for my niece.’

She leaves before Yelena can say goodbye.

She’s learned from experience that these types of occurrences are of no coincidence. In some intricate way she and this name are connected. Connected too, to this early childhood education professional and her grandfather. Also to Barnes, who gave her the name in a small notebook that she has stuffed between her garments in her suitcase.

So she follows through with due process, intel gathering, research — trite, tedious business — diligently, meticulously.

Nothing fruitful comes to pass.

Entirely too much had been destroyed at the end of the Cold War. Each change in regime stripping away layers of existence, bleaching the traces of organisations, events, people.

But Yelena existed, more than just memories in the failing mind of an old man — on paper, in red, in the notebook she has locked away inside her luggage, and as a dated photo of a woman with Natasha’s face.

She dreads what she must do.

The house is shockingly easy to break into, in the outskirts of the city with virtually no security system and a barely functioning lock. She scans the closed doors to the bedrooms, correlating the layout of the house to a construction plan she had found in one of the city’s archives and carefully opens the living room door.

At four am there are no electronics blinking their LED lights in the dark room. A fire cackles in front of a chair, the occupant’s frail breathing heard intermittently over the sound of the fire. Natasha approaches with stealth. The old man’s eyes are tightly closed as he moans through pain inflicted from his dreams.

On the mantle above the fireplace, the picture of the woman looks back at her like a mirror.

Natasha picks up the framed photo. It is old, discoloured, but lurid for its age. She tucks the photo in her waistband, before gently shaking the old man’s shoulder.

He wakes up with a gasp, looks at Natasha with blank colourless eyes, his pupils enlarge to accommodate the darkness. ‘Yelena, is that you?’

Natasha feels her hand shake against the dusty cardigan covering sallow flesh.

‘Yelena,’ The old man calls, grasping her with bony, trembling fingers, ‘My angel, my love, my Yelena, you’ve come for me.’

Natasha doesn’t know whether to respond to the name rasped in that desperate voice, or to push away the unsteady touch of his hands.

‘My Yelena, my love, take me, take me…’ He calls.

Natasha puts a finger against her lips to shush him, as he’s being quite loud, but he keeps moaning and gasping that name, ‘My Yelena, your hair is so beautiful, you are as beautiful as fire.’ Each breath of the old man shallower than the previous one until he suddenly chokes on his own saliva.

Natasha hears footsteps. She’s out of the window when the kindergarten teacher rushes into the living room, crying ‘dedushka!’ as she tries to calm the convulsing man in the chair to no avail. Natasha retreats into the shadows, leaving the cries of the old man and the panicked sobs of the granddaughter to the night of the countryside.

The obituary is printed three days later along with a picture of her face with blond hair in fifties updo in a simple police notice of wanted person. She’s glad she kept the face-shift technology from SHIELD.

She thought she had come close to the answer to the mystery. She had checked the old man’s marriage record and found a signature of Yelena on the register, but no other clues. Where she worked, if she had property or bank account or an identity card. So many things destroyed by the fall of the Soviets, no doubt, on purpose.

Nights arrive early and bright with a drop in temperature, the freezing air holding onto the moisture not quite dense enough to form snow. Instead, it diffuses the hazy red taillights as it settles across the streets outside where she is staying, frosting the windows in grains of water condensation.

She leans her forehead against the semi-transparent glass. _Take you out, stuff something else back in._ Clint forcing out the words like he needed to remember his own syntax. Loki had him for little more than sixty hours and he’d already forgotten his own words. How must it have felt for Barnes to have endured for decades.

Herself as well, probably.

I could have been cryogenically frozen as well, my memories wiped, replaced with fresh ones. Or, Or, they could have put her face on mine surgically when they performed those other procedures on me. Or, I could be her clone. Common creatures, spiders, black-widows, easy enough to replicate. Expendable, like us, replaceable, cloneable.

_Take you out, stuff something else inside._

‘Time for a lullaby,’ She murmurs, remembering the way green flesh had vibrated beneath her hand when she touched the Hulk. Bruce left without showing his face. He probably understands that her attraction was to the monster and not to him. She had tried to connect with Bruce via the scars and inhumanity within the both of them, not realising that he despised that part.

He had called it an exposed nerve.

She feels for the scar on her abdomen. Presses into the phantom pain.

They can take my face, take my body, take my mind, take me out of my time.

They can’t take my scars. My pain are my own.

When she comes to the cottage again, the granddaughter points a gun at her face.

She puts her hands up: ‘I mean no harm.’

The kindergarten teacher has tears streaming down her face but her jaw is clenched, her joints locked, knuckles white as she has both hands around the grip.

‘Don’t move,’ it’s clear this is her first time from the quivering of her forearms, ‘leave this place.’

‘I’m sorry for what happened, but I cannot.’ Natasha takes a step forward.

Yelena stumbles back: ‘You killed my grandfather. I am calling the police to have you arrested.’

‘You can call the police, but you know as well as I that I did not harm him.’

Yelena swallows back a sob: ‘You took him away, somehow you’ve returned and taken him with you. Because you had to have him, in the end, even though you were the one who left.’

Natasha stops her approaching steps. The wind picks up a branch and whips it against the window in a spectacular display of shadow and sound and Natasha has already disarmed Yelena. She subdues the girl in a firm, refrained hold, twisting her wrist just enough for the pain to register, cautioning the imminence of joint damage.

‘I do not mean harm, Yelena. Though your grandfather’s passing has indeed been unfortunate, it was not my doing.’

The girl shudders, even through the thick layers she can feel the fear jittering through the body in her grip.

‘But I need to know. I need to know, where is she?’

Yelena shakes her head, ‘I don’t know.’

‘Yelena—’

‘My grandfather never stopped looking for her, even after he was once again married, but he never came across anything conclusive.’

Natasha closed her eyes, bricks crumbling in her head, phantom pain in her toes, stinging with desire for the pressure of bandages, the lack of information only confirms her suspicion.

‘They, tried to take the photo away once.’ Yelena said.

‘Who?’

‘The KGB, or so we think, they searched the place and took my grandfather away. This was before I was born. A few days later they let him go. I was never really sure why.’

Natasha releases her, one wrist at a time, before ejecting the magazine and tossing the unloaded gun at Yelena’s feet.

‘You can call the police now.’ She says. Yelena collapses to the ground, reaching for the weapon as Natasha leaves via the front door.

She keeps the magazine with the little notebook in her luggage.

Further researches into the KGB has not yielded any results, nothing with that name, or of the program, or of the first wife of Mikhail Petrovski.

She knows, instinctively, that there are more pieces of the puzzle that she hasn’t looked into, ignored on purpose, afraid of the answers or questions it might posit.

The Winter Soldier program.

She had combed the databases for that piece of the puzzle before, under the order of SHIELD, or HYDRA, they were indeed one and the same. Steve Rogers, who was determined to be neither, had told her he had a personal stake in the whole affair and was going to handle it himself. She had other pressing matters to deal with — it was after the Triskelion incident. She never brought it up again.

Natasha weighs the magazine of bullets in one hand and the notebook in another. New snow begins to pile on the windowsill outside her hotel room, as sirens wail past in the streets below.

They would never use sirens. If they knew where she was, they would strike at night, with no light, catch her off guard, terminate without prejudice.

She looks at the grid of the cityscape stretching into the horizon blurred by snow.

And knows that she needs to find answers elsewhere.

* * *

2.

‘Tony.’

Stark, thinner, in a t-shirt and jeans one size too small, takes one look at her and walks backwards towards the bar of the sunken living area.

‘Friday, what did I say about initiating protocol?’

‘Do you want me to call for backup, boss?’ the AI replies.

Tony rolls his eyes. ‘Too late now. How did you get past the security system? I knew fruit-patented-Facial-ID can’t be trusted.’

Natasha holds up the face-shift remote, ‘I’m shocked you’re not using Stark tech.’

Tony files his fingers through his hair until Natasha spots strands of silver amongst the dark curls. ‘Tax issue. Don’t ask, I’m slowly replacing everything in this shed.’

‘I need your help.’

Tony laughs bitterly, ‘That’s rich, _Natalie_.’

Natasha blanches, remembering the conversation at the diner topped by a giant statue of a donut. She had thought of Tony as _‘asset’_ back then.

‘Not like that, it’s personal this time—’

‘Isn’t it always?’

Natasha thinks of the unanswered messages, the numbers she decided not to dial, the video surveillance she decided not to examine, the trip to Siberia she decided not to take.

The next words out of her mouth are acerbic: ‘What I’m asking falls along the category of a favour.’ Tony has now defensively unscrewed a bottle of scotch. ‘Your skills as a hacker—’

Tony tinkers with the ice-press: ‘PHD in computer engineering and software development, but yes, let’s indeed stick with the dated urban patois. Plus, I’m done with that, haven’t you heard? Last time I ‘hacked’ something, it destroyed a small Eastern European country.’

‘Not computers, Tony.’

The refracted light from the copper ice-press gleans across Tony’s face as comprehension dawns.

‘Please, Tony,’ Natasha steps closer.

They look at each other before Tony sets the glass of alcohol down: ‘Oh no, you don’t mean—’

Natasha hops onto the bar, taking the drink: ‘Your tech has been—’

But Tony is already walking away, his own glass of scotch dangling between his fingers. ‘Nuh-uh, Nat, no brain fuddling. Also done with that, I am.’

Natasha follows his frantic pacing around the room with her eyes: ‘Tony—’

A crash, then a red and black shape drops down from the skylight. ‘Mr. Stark! The beacon, the beacon was activated and—’ The figure notices Natasha, and freezes.

Natasha has her thumb on the energising switch at her waist as she downs the drink in one gulp. Tony is trying very hard to sip his instead of doing the same.

‘Uh — Mr. Stark, is she the reason you called for backup?’

‘Wasn’t my call,’ Tony answers, ‘Friday’s protocols. Also, nice of you to show up so late.’

The figure scratches the back of his head. ‘Oh, um, ok,’ He turns to Natasha, ‘you shouldn’t be here.’

Natasha studies the oddity in front of her.

‘What is he?’

Tony makes a gesture. The other pulls off his face mask to reveal the unlined face of a teenager.

Natasha gawks, jumping down from where she’s perched on the bar and turns to Tony. ‘This, _this_ is your backup? Are you kidding me, Tony?’

Tony square his shoulders and straightens in that familiar way like a pluming rooster being challenged by another male, and the two of them begin speaking at the same time.

‘It wasn’t my—’

‘He’s a—’

‘—idea, he was the one who insisted—’

‘— _child?_! Have you—’

‘There be a bea—’

‘—completely lost your mind?! How fast did you—’

‘—I mean backup protocol in the first place, and there was also—’

‘—forget everything about—’

‘—those pending upgrades, on top of—’

‘—the twins, or that boy from Sokovia! Oh my god he was the one you—’

‘—The absence of alternatives. I mean, I offered, but he—’

‘—dragged to Germany! I thought—’

‘—won’t take the juice box and so—’

‘—you had that revelation or something! Yet here you are—’

‘—I’m stuck with this.’

‘—with a child, Tony, he’s a child!’ Natasha snapped.

‘Yes he is,’ Tony hung his head, ‘but he’s the only one.’

Natasha feels like someone had unplugged a leak inside, but she refuses to break her gaze with the top of Tony’s head. The boy in the suit looks curiously between the two of them, first one, then the other. His curly hair slowly regains their ridiculous bounce after being freed from the headgear.

Finally Tony lifts his head, but his mouth is thinned into a slight purse.

‘All of you left, _all_.’ Tony throws his hands in the air before and going for a refill of his scotch. ‘There was no one, Natasha: no more serum-chock individuals we can thaw from blocks of ice, or friends from other worlds in a galaxy far far away, or ex-comm block super-spies, or even that creep with the eyepatch. There’s just me, and Vision, and the occasional phone call from James’ ( _Rhodes_ , Natasha supplies in her mind) ‘offering his help, which I turn down. Kid saved a city and a plane of tech for me, Nat, not to mention Happy’s life.’

 _He’s still a child though._ Natasha thinks, but bites her tongue.

Tony puts his scotch down. ‘Look, I would never have called for backup if you’d just called or pigeoned beforehand, or sent an email, or a death threat.’

The teenager perches on a chair, his feet together in a frog crouch.

‘I’m not a child.’ The child says, ‘I’m Peter, I mean Spiderman.’ He turns to Nat and extends his hand. ‘Hi, I think we met last time, in Germany.’

Natasha crosses her arms, ignoring the outstretched hand. Peter lowers the hand in disappointment when Natasha grabs his arm and flips him. Peter goes down in a shocked gasp, his back hitting the ground and his attempt to get up immediately throttled by a knee on his ribcage and a hand around his neck, as blue electricity zaps along Natasha’s suit.

Peter puts his hands up against the floor next to his ears, palms out.

Natasha lets go and pulls him up. Peter looks shaken as Natasha dusts off her hands.

‘Your backup sucks.’

Tony is trying hard not to laugh into his scotch.

‘Tell you what, Tony, I’ll upgrade your — security, if you help me.’

Natasha looks as Tony shakes his head, putting down the crystal glass on the counter.

‘It’s for myself.’ When Tony doesn’t answer, she implores. ‘Tony, please.’

Tony sighs: ‘Natasha, you know what, I had a really, really bad time in Germany, because some people wanted me to do things one way and others wanted me to do things another way and no one was willing to talk or listen. So if you want my help, how about we approach this like adults? How about instead of rushing into things we don’t have a grasp on, we talk about it?’

Natasha recognises concession. ‘Ok.’

Tony nods, ‘I’ll get Happy to take Parker home. Friday, can you show Miss Widow to lab 7?’

As he passes her Natasha grabs Tony and hugs him across his shoulder, startling him into a squawk.

‘It’s good to see you too, Natasha.’ Tony returns her gesture with a quick squeeze.

Natasha looks around the empty room as she unzips her power suit. ‘This is a bit disappointing, Stark, you still don’t trust me with the interior of your workshop?’

Tony hands her a pair of small clips that look similar to the standard SHIELD issue earpieces. ‘Natasha, you have access to my liquor cabinet, you might as well have access to my internal organs. Now put those on, I’m going to do some initial scans.’

Natasha sits down upon the rubber flooring painted with gridded lines. ‘Please don’t tell me this is going to materialise into some kind of shrink’s office and you’re going to ask me how things make me feel.’

Tony lets out a single chuckle as he types on his tablet and launches a three dimensional projections of clustering lights, twinkling and eclipsing between them and the ceiling, pulsating with life.

Natasha admires the webbing of lights for a silent second. ‘Is this a scan of my brain?’ She asks.

Tony shakes his head. ‘Alpha Centauri, rendered in the fundamental interactions.’

Natasha hugs her knees to her chest. ‘Showing off, Stark?’

‘When the scan starts your brain might start engaging with the program and past memories might manifest in some kind of sensory feedback. To prevent that from overwhelming you, this projection acts as a grounding image, helps anchor your consciousness by forming new memory.’

Natasha holds her hand out and watches the light ripple around her fingers. ‘Still sounds like you’re showing off your star-map Stark. When do we get space travel technology?’

‘Just look at the galaxy, Natasha.’ Tony says: ‘I’m just doing a surface—’

The galaxy twirls about her and brightens, blinding her.

Opaque white obstructs her vision. Her hands freeze in the sudden onset of cold — a chill of winter which cannot be replicated by artificial air-conditioning. Natasha extends her hand, which is clad in kid-glove, the flock at the fingertips rubbed smooth from past wear. Within her palm a snowball indented with the shape of her fingers.

She looks around, Tony has disappeared. Within the snow a trodden path materialises in front of her. And she follows it, the sensation of blizzard whipping across her skin an authenticating pain. The sludge is still fresh enough that it crunches under her feet and she realises that the path is made by a single set of tiny footprints. In the gray fog of the flakes of snow, there are no shadows.

The footsteps lead her to a cottage surrounded by leafless trees. Something brushes past her face that is icy and wet and she realises that it’s her hair, now marred by the condensation of her breath, as pale as the fields around her.

She touches the curls on her head, and looks down at the glove covered hands. _I’m her,_ she jolts, _Yelena, these are her memories, and somehow, in my mind, I can see them._

A door to a familiar cabin, newer, less worn by the weather. A creak as it opens and a blur of yellow and blue rushes at her. She picks up the child and kisses her on her head, where fine blond curls are gathered upwards by a red bow. She smells like lemon cakes and oranges. A hand fits around her waist and she turns to a man who is clearly a younger version of the old man in the chair. ‘My dear,’ Russian rolls off her tongue untainted by the lazy r’s of English and the man’s stubbles graze against her temple.

The child now demands for the man’s attention. He aquisces and lets go of Yelena, picking up the child instead. Her gaze follows them until they disappear into the next room, then look towards the mantel, a mirror where the framed picture would be, reflecting Yelena’s face.

 _‘Mama’_ the girl calls to her but her voice is distorted, gurgling like it’s coming from beneath water. The rush of icy torrent floods through the still open door, submerging her. She sinks as the deluge drags her down, the heavy wool soaked, leaden on her limbs.

She drowns before she’s dragged upwards. Her face scrapes on something sharp, ice.

Pressure against her chest as someone rips off her coat. Metal fingers forcing her lips open as he breathes searing heat into her mouth.

‘Nadyenka.’ The man above her says, voice still distorted, ‘you’re safe.’

She’s holding onto his coat, soaked and shivering on the ice.

‘Let me go, I want to be with her.’

‘My love, it’s over.’

‘No, let me, let me go!’

Shaggy hair shakes icy water onto her face tight with the numbness of cold.

It takes a while before she realises that the animal cries are her own. Icy air rending her insides like someone’s dragging chainmail from within her throat.

Metal strong arm embraces her against a warm chest. ‘My Nadyenka, quiet. You must calm.’

But she can only howl hoarsely into the snow until he smothers her, wraps her in his coat, pressing her against his singlet and she’s howling into rigid, lemon scented fabric.

The ice cracks beneath them. She catches a glimpse of crisp grey before she’s pulled under again. Her lungs filling with water as her screams escape as distorted bubbles out of her mouth, dispersing as they spread against the underside of opaque ice. Tentacles of freezing cold dragging her into the darkening depth.

She kicks, scratches at the constricting and suffocating cold shackling her in her place. Desperate, she claws at her own clothing, her body losing their strength, as the last of the air is taken from her lungs by icy gulps of water.

She chokes as she falls upon her hands and knees. Tony’s gauntlets pinning her wrists to the ground.

‘Natasha!’ Tony approaches. Natasha tries to raise a hand and tell him she’s fine, instead she empties the contents of her stomach onto the grey rubber floor.

‘I’m fine.’ Natasha rasps through the burn and stench of bile. ‘I’m fine. Get, get me out of these things.’

Tony waves his hand and the gauntlets disassemble into pieces. ‘I knew this was a bad idea.’

Natasha wipes her mouth, and tries to straighten. ‘What was that? Who was the girl?’

Tony drapes a blanket across her shoulders as the disassembled pieces of Tony’s armour fly away. Natasha flinches, before noticing that she’s ripped her top to shreds.

‘I thought you said it was supposed to be a surface scan.’ She draws the cloth tight around herself, still heaving.

‘It was!’ Tony says while furiously typing on his tablet. ‘But the memory clouts — it’s not like anything I’ve ever encountered. It’s not the program, or BARF, or me… it’s…’

Giving up on trying to straighten, Natasha collapse onto her side. Her head feels like it’s about to split apart as she rolls until she’s lying on her back. Her gaze focuses on the projection above her.

‘It’s me.’ She says, out loud, the words more terrifying to herself than the alien feeling of water in her lungs.

Tony drops his tablet. Natasha turns her head to study him. In the shroud of light from the projection, Tony’s face is deathly grey.

‘What did they do to you?’ Tony whispers, meaning to pick up the tablet, but keeps his eyes on Natasha, who recognises the abject fear as the same she had seen on Yelena’s face in that cottage in rural Moscow.

‘You’ve seen this before.’ Natasha realises, ‘This kind of mental conditioning, these occluded memories.’

Tony vigorously shakes his head, ‘Not in BARF, not manifested this way. Natasha, you were throwing yourself off the walls like- like you were possessed.’

The ground beneath her is made of dense rubber, a good level of firmness without being brutal on her spine, but Natasha can feel the blossoms of pain on her body where bruises are already forming from the impacts.

‘Barnes,’ Natasha clarifies, watching Tony, whose mouth falls open, ‘back before we knew about the Triskelion incident, we found—’

‘I know what you found, Natasha.’ Tony interrupts, terse, his hands trembling.

It clicks in her mind: the sudden disappearance of Steve Rogers, Tony’s move to the Avengers tower, the footage that Steve conveniently told her not to follow up after the Triskelion incident.

Tony visibly shudders. Before he turns away. ‘I’ll get someone to clean that up. You should get changed as well. There’s still changes of clothing for you in your old quarters.’

Natasha leaps up, ignoring the nausea inducing headache as her brain sloshes around in her skull. ‘Tony, I didn’t—’

Tony turns to Natasha. ‘My tech is not built for this, Natasha.’ His expression is graven as he raises a hand: ‘Just, go take a rest.’

Natasha stares at the tablet still on the gridded floor of the chamber. As her head reels from the immersion and subsequent resuscitation. Amidst too many sensations of cold and the contrasting warmth of those little arms around her, that spread of fire when the childish voice called: _‘mama’_.

Tony kept her old room in the same condition as when she stayed at the compound, down to the identical brand of shampoo. She didn’t think she’d fall asleep, but exhaustion sets in almost as soon as she’s lying down.

She dreams.

It’s a good dream. Natasha doesn’t know how to handle those. Pain she can temper. Shock she can absorb. Fear she can tackle and bend and squeeze into those gaps where parts of her leak out in invisible gushes. But happiness, joy, fills her chest with something she doesn’t know how to breathe around, drowns her, in a way that ultimately takes away her control.

In the dream she’s laughing as someone kisses down her back, tickling her skin as the ends of their hair fall against her skin. Metal fingers trace the dent between her shoulder blades as lips follow their trajectory. She gets a leg over and flips them until she’s straddled across the warm body, looking into eyes marred by ink-like shadows.

She holds the stubbled face between her hands, and suddenly they are trapped in amber, the firm jawline set behind tripled-panelled glass and her fingers unable to find purchase on the curved edgeless surface. She claws at the glass, as eyelids lower over the steel coloured eyes.

She wakes to her own voice.

 _‘James.’_ She had whispered into the air-conditioned air.

She arrives at the training grounds early to find Tony sitting on a bench, drinking from a plastic cup containing slush which is a disturbing shade of green.

‘I’m ready to upgrade your security.’ She says, pulling her elbow behind her ear in a stretch.

Tony looks at her. His face is just as pale and exhausted as yesterday.

‘I met you in a gym not so dissimilar to this one.’

Natasha straddles a bench. ‘With Happy, and Miss Potts, I was Natalia then.’

‘You were sent to monitor me,’ Tony puts down his smoothie, ‘Fury sold it to me as you helping me, though I never asked for it.’

‘You were an ‘asset’ back then.’ Natasha swipes her hand across the chrome bar behind her. ‘I was given debriefing folders of your stats.’

Tony shakes his head, ‘Who could have thought I’d be debriefing you all these years later.’

Natasha frowns, ‘Debriefing only happens at the end of—’

‘—of a mission, yeah, I get it. Ain’t my first rodeo. Also not what I’m trying to say, Natasha.’

Natasha folds her hands over her lap and waits.

‘Did you know how my parents died? Did Rogers tell you?’

Natasha shakes her head, ‘I had my suspicions. But I have not—I didn’t follow up. I was discouraged from doing so, had been given other tasks.’

‘You can’t possibly be the first SHIELD agent they sent to monitor me.’ Tony says, leaning back against the wall. ‘With how connected my old man was to the whole organisation, there must have been a constant effort to keep up to date with his son, and the company, arguably only made possible by the existence of SHIELD.’

Natasha furrows her eyebrows: ‘Where are you going with this?’

‘Who knows which of the monitors turned out to be HYDRA.’

Natasha jolts: ‘Tony—’

Tony raises a hand. ‘Doesn’t matter if you are. I built all these suits, these tech, and yes, that model of Alpha Centauri, for this very reason. I don’t need to worry about anyone monitoring or reporting about me.

‘But Natasha, you’d be mad to believe for just one moment I have even a sliver of trust remaining for anyone associated with any of this.’

The force of his words almost pushes her back physically.

‘My choice, Nat, not directed at anyone specifically.’ Tony stares at her. ‘But I’m really, really, _really_ done with anything SHIELD or HYDRA related. My best friend is in a prosthetic exoskeleton, all of my ex-colleagues are in hiding, and—’ He closes his eyes, Natasha thinks Siberia must have been colder than she anticipated, ‘I’m more aware than ever what my bottom line is. And I don’t care, I don’t care if it’s personal for you. I can’t prioritise your request over my own sanity. I’m not trying to get a rise out of you.’

Natasha forces herself to regulate her breathing.

‘I wish I could believe you.’ She lowers her head. ‘What I mean is, I completely understand if you can’t handle looking at my fillings. But as for the fact that you are done?’

Natasha clenches and unclenches her hands: ‘I saw the paper works. I know you’ve been submitting motions to have their sentences reversed,’ behind her the sun rises steadily through the oversized window, bringing no warmth with its brilliance, ‘I know, even though you absolutely should, you don’t hold these things against them—’

Tony waves her off. ‘It was all James,’ _Rhodes_ , Natasha mentally completed, ‘he wouldn’t leave me alone. Gave me these long speeches about patriotism and conventions until I called legal about it.’

Natasha bites the inside of her cheeks, sensing Tony’s efforts to disengage, deny his involvement even though it’s his signature and not Rhodes on the requests. She wonders what he used as bargaining chips with the relevant authorities. If he gave them his galaxy, if it had been scanned directly from his mind.

‘Tony,’ Natasha grabs his wrist, ‘You have to help me. Like you’re doing with the others.’

Tony finally looks at her, he seems to have suddenly aged.

‘I need to find out, Tony.’ She holds his gaze, blinking back the heat behind her eyes. ‘Our team is gone. SHIELD was a lie.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I went to Warsaw. I went to Moscow. Tony, I have nowhere else to go.’

She knows the words before they leave Tony’s mouth: ‘Natasha, now it’s my turn to call you out on your own self-serving lie.’

* * *

3.

When she arrives in Wakanda, the heat is a bone deep caress after months in the cold. She sweats through her mesh top and is tempted to change into one of those long robes worn by the local women with tan patterns dyed on starchy linen. Instead, she presses her palm against the side of her stomach, covering the bullet-hole scar.

Steve Rogers has grown an impressive beard and equally impressive dark circles since Germany. He opens his mouth to offer a greeting before she cuts him off: ‘I want a few words with Barnes.’

Steve opens his mouth then closes it, uncharacteristically hesitant: ‘Did Ton-, did Stark send you?’

She resists the urge to roll her eyes: ‘Your quarrels with Stark are your own, _Mister_ Rogers, I’m here for myself.’

Steve looks like he wants to ask more but Natasha continues: ‘I’m done. I was compromised. Loki, aliens, HYDRA. I dragged a self-exiled man into the fray without considering the consequences. Now he’s lost to this world. SI, Ultron, Sokovia. I let myself be inserted into people’s lives without recourse and look what happened, an innocent man paralysed, a fatherless family in that farmhouse, and a ghost of an AI wandering around the masterless mansion. And that’s not even counting my former teammates who are now criminals.’

‘You did those things to save people, sometimes to save everyone.’

Natasha bristles at the ache within her. Once upon a time, Steve’s voice in her earpiece grounded her, guided her to targets and objectives. Natasha longs momentarily for the finitude. Arrow laid against a drawn bow, body and mind pointed at the target, letting others direct the trajectory.

‘I’m done with that, as I said. Before I go rushing to save someone else, I need to un-compromise myself, find out what they’d taken from my head. There are pieces missing, Steve, memories that feel like a cast, people I can’t put faces to. You’ve seen first hand the consequence of such absences.’

Steve furrows his eyebrows, Natasha thinks he looks thinner, and wondered if that was possible with his serum. ‘Ok, well, Bucky is —’ He sighs, leans his impressive shoulders against the wall before turning his head away. ‘He’s in cryosleep.’

‘You iced him?’

Steve visibly shudders at the phrase. ‘Not me, he made the call. After Siberia, he’s no longer certain if someone is still out there with the codes. And — T’challa assures me he’s figuring out a way but, it’s been a pretty horrifying year here.’

Natasha steels her hands from shaking. ‘His call, not yours, yeah, I can see that.’

Steve just looks at her crestfallen.

Natasha puts her hand over the black notebook that she has tucked against her stomach, beneath her clothing, against the scar of the bullet wound.

‘Would I be able to speak with him.’

Steve’s frowns, ‘I...I’m not sure if that’s the best thing to do.’

Natasha purses her lips: ‘You? Not sure?’

Steve gives her a look.

Natasha sits down on one of the plush sofas in the outside deck area overlooking the waterfall. The densely woven cloth of the upholstery rough but even, luxurious to touch under her fingers.

‘It’s nice here.’ She says.

Steve quirks his lips. ‘T’Challa has been kind to me.’ He studies his own hands.

‘An ideal holiday destination,’ Natasha keeps her eyes on him, ‘green is said to relax the eyes.’

Steve stretches his fingers out, his nails glass smooth and flawless.

‘Amenities and aesthetics,’ Natasha crosses her legs, ‘Better than the compound, even. Definitely better than a prison raft in the middle of the ocean.’

‘Is that a threat, Nat?’ Steve’s face slips into nonchalance.

Natasha cocks her head, ‘Rogers, in all your years to have known me, when have I ever threatened you?’

Steve looks away.

Natasha sinks back into the cushions: ‘I’m just trying to work out the allure. To be honest, I get it. The weather is encompassing. The mountains are stunning, tempting even for me to go on a hike to explore them. There are no tourists. The people and their rulers are peaceful. It’s remote, secluded, idyllic. It’s almost like a land out of time.’

Steve’s hands are clenched by his sides.

‘Am I threatening you.’ Natasha lets out a single chuckle.

Steve steps forward, ‘If you have something to say, Romanoff—’

‘You know what I do.’ Natasha stands up. ‘I’m done with this as well, this concession I always make to grown ass men. Because of Bruce, I read up on the serum, and came to the conclusion that Doctor Erskine’s formula was unreplicable because it was flawless. But it turns out that Bruce’s was superior because he at least acknowledged that humans have an emotional spectrum, whereas Dr. Erskine just happened to stumble upon the most emotionally suppressed test subject and thus never encountered that part of the issue. You have a lot of growing up to do, Steve Rogers. And if all you can ask me is am I threatening you, then yes, consider it a warning to stay out of my way. As I said, this is my efforts to undo whatever they did to me. I know better than to disregard the laws of the land I stand on, or to take arms against my friends. I know better than to facilitate the release of HYDRA assets or SHIELD targets, whatever you might see Barnes as.’

Steve squares his shoulders, his elbow curving just the slightest like he’s still strapped to a shield: ‘That’s not what I...’

Natasha raises her hand: ‘I’m done coddling you, Steve. Smash, discus, shot-put, cartwheel your way out of that electronics store yourself. I have better things to do.’

She walks past without looking at him.

‘Nat do you, do you talk to the others?’

Natasha stops, turns and holds out her phone: ‘Eighty seven, Cap, Laura has left me a total of eighty-seven messages since Germany. I know you rescued them from the raft, but they can’t very well return to the USA to be indicted. So guess who’s left with the task of answering for that call you made? Do you know that Scott Lang also has a family? A family he risked his life to get back before being dragged to a foreign airport to settle someone else’s dispute, a family whose trust he’s once again lost.’

Steve pales, as he turns away from Natasha, leaning his shoulder against the wall, giving her a view of the back of his head.

‘Colonel Rhodes is fine, by the way, recovering at a steady rate despite the fractured spine in a facility out in Washington state. He has help, of course, of the SI kind. Vision is in the facility upstate, which Tony has completely restructured. I haven’t stopped searching for Bruce since Sokovia, be it that he’s lost, or more likely, doesn’t want to be found, I’m going to keep searching.’

 _I’m really, really, really done._ Stark had said. Natasha keeps that in mind as she finishes: ‘That’s all I have, Steve. All my cards on the table. Now you can threaten me too, I guess, or do what you want.’

Steve is still leaning against the wall when she leaves.

Princess Shuri takes an immediate interest to the technology, and enthusiastically drags Natasha into her lab despite warning looks from her guards stationed by the door.

The girl’s gaze become fixated on the screen after she plugs in the thumb-drive. Her fingers flying off the keyboard as she immediately goes about disseminating Tony’s program.

‘For the son of a thief that Tony Stark is not without his talents.’ She steals a look at Natasha from behind her monitor, the blue glow illuminating the markings on her face. ‘But he must have very bad security to let you take all this with you.’

Natasha shrugs, ‘He let me into his liquor cabinet, might as well have unlocked the vaults.’

Shuri grins. ‘It is impressive, nonetheless, what he had invented. Was it his original intention to combat neural programming?’

Natasha thinks about the lecture Tony had held at MIT which had been simulcasted on multiple streaming websites, of the young boy who looked longingly at his parents’ faces.

‘I don’t pretend to know even a little bit of what Tony Stark’s intentions are.’

‘You are lying,’ Shuri’s eyes glint, ‘but it does not matter.’

‘So,’ Natasha asks, as she looks around at the pristine lab deceptively empty of artefacts, ‘can you do anything with it?’

Shuri walks away from the computer station and touches Natasha on her face. Natasha freezes, notices one of the palace guards adjusting the grip on her staff.

Shuri files a strand of Natasha’s hair back behind her ears. ‘Miss Romanoff, have you heard of my brother’s herb garden?’

‘This is not going to give me super strength is it?’ Natasha stares at the glowing liquid, ‘I’m not wrestling someone a loin cloth.’

Shuri laughs, ‘You would not need the enhancement to beat them.’

She stirs the liquid with a metal rod, the surface of the liquid is lime green, semi opaque and glittering, the movement of the utensil leaves behind swirl-like ripples like stars within a galaxy. ‘This is not intended for combat. I extracted the part of the compound which only triggers sensory based experience in a lucid form. BARF in a liquid.’

Natasha thinks her face must be getting close to the colour of the drink. ‘You do know what BARF means in English, don’t you?’

Shuri pours the drink into a tall ice-filled glass, topping it with a paper umbrella as she hands it over: ‘It’s delicious, I promise.’

Natasha wrinkles her nose, taking the highball glass from Shuri’s hand. The ice cubes clang against the crystal as she strolls to the lounge in front of the window. The sunset of Wakanda is particularly spectacular, violets and oranges sinking beneath the deep green canopy that tops the exposed rocks of the cliffside.

‘I remember what your brother’s bodyguard said to me the first time she met me.’ Natasha sloshes the glass in her hand, watching the gleam on the glazed surface. ‘It would not be a bad opportunity to take me out.’

Shuri, glass of water in her own hand, joins Natasha, sitting down next to her on the couch. ‘Do you trust me?’ She asks, her chocolate eyes reflecting the brilliant sunlight.

Natasha leans back against the armrest, ‘The better question is, why do you trust me? Enough to help me?’

Shuri shrugs. ‘What do you say before you cheers in Russia?’ She asks, raising her glass.

Natasha pauses, her eyebrows furrowing as she suddenly misses the acrid Moscow air. ‘I prefer English.’ She clinks her glass with Shuri’s.

‘Cheers.’ Natasha says, mirthless, as she takes a sip.

Shuri guides her head into her lap, stroking her temple.

Natasha thinks she whispers something like _‘Yelena’_ but she’s too far gone to know for sure.

* * *

4.

The fields are yellowing and the breeze is laced with the smell of naked crusting earth after an autumn harvest. The window sills, weathered by the wind and heat, rattles as Natasha looks around the familiar sunken living room in Clint’s house. She can hear the sound of Clint laughing outside accompanied by a whoosh of an arrow then cheering from his children. Citrus scented steam wets her face, rising from her designated mug, the one that has the logo of the summer camp Nathan went to. The heat warms her fingers through the ceramic. Natasha looks out of the window to catch a glimpse of the children when the smell of baking causes her to turn towards the kitchen.

Laura, with flour still plastered on her cheek, her oven-mitt covered hands holding a pie tin, calls out for her family to have afternoon tea.

Natasha joins her. Laura gives her a smile, setting the steaming pastry down on a trivet before leaving through the back door. The house quietens, and from up the stairs the sound of a music box playing a familiar melody. Natasha turns, and follows the source of the sound, ascending the narrow staircase as the walls around her deepens into crimson and the railing beneath her hand cooling from oak to steel.

The ballet studio is located in an old building that managed to survive the demolition. Newly installed railings chilling to touch in the stairwell, but the floors of the studio are freshly laid with mahogany, the same material as the wooden picture rails and wainscoting that run along the crimson walls.

Pain shoots through her legs, all the way along her hips and up her sides, sweat seeping down from her hairline she strains herself, her feet on fire in a fresh pair of demi-pointes.

‘Élevé!’ The instructor calls. Natasha pushes through the burning of the stretch. The ground falls beneath her. She floats up, her toes brushing across the mahogany flooring before they take off, the white framed windows descending around her.

The ceiling is painted with baroque angels who part to reveal buttery, canary coloured clouds and a sky in periwinkle. Natasha’s face heats up from the burning of sunlight as she’s blinded by the brightness.

When her vision clears she’s lying on a hospital bed, her arms tied down, her ankles shackled, the operation lights burning spots in her eyes. She’s numb from the waist down. An aesthetician covers her nose and mouth with a mask, and she’s plunged again into the blinding white.

A wafting scent of citrus, as she blinks awake. The room around her is dim, faded wallpaper and a metal railed bed. The bedsheets beneath her are soft in their wornness. Overhead the ceiling is covered by a canopy of galaxial lights.

 _Alpha Centauri_ , Natasha remembers.

Her stomach settles as she gets out of bed. She’s in a nightgown that falls to below her knees, and by the bed a pair of cloth slippers too big for her feet.

The room, in its ethereal light, looks familiar yet different. The blinds are drawn over the windows and when Natasha reaches towards them she hears the quiet sound of footsteps behind her.

She whips her head around at the clang of metal.

The red star catches her eyes. James Barnes, face unshaven and in a worn singlet and pajama pants, smiles at her and holds out a steaming glass of tea in a nickel cup holder.

‘Tea?’

Natasha perches on the side of the mattress. He joins her, his warmth and scent surrounding her as she takes the tea from his hand. She studies him. He looks less worn than what she had expected, his stubble appearing to be even rather than haggered like he had spent nights out on some rooftop prone over a scope. The singlet he’s wearing is frayed at the hem, and hangs off his shoulders, Natasha touches his arm, the part where flesh meets metal unscarred and smooth, his tendons and muscles merging seamlessly with the casing. His skin is soft and damp as she strokes her hand upwards from his shoulder to his nape, and when she files her fingers through his hair, the strands are feather soft, still damp from his shower.

He wraps an arm around her back. The metal warm and hard through her night clothes but his touch is soft.

‘I don’t remember this part.’ She admits, taking a sip of the tea as she looks up at the ceiling encased in the cloud of light.

‘That’s because this is not real.’ He kisses her on her ear, before scooting back, laying pillows across the metal railings before beckoning her.

‘I thought Shuri said the cocktail only induced sensory registered experiences.’ She joins him, settling above the comforter, feeling his hand atop her head as he guides her to lie across his chest, so she can hear the beating of his heart along with the humming of the mechanics in his prosthetic.

‘Well, that’s not real.’ He points at the ceiling, before taking her tea from her and setting it down on the nightstand.

‘But I’ve been in this room before,’ She realises, ‘with you.’

Light plays across his face as his face softens into a melancholy smile. ‘Yes, Nadyenka.’

‘We were — we are in hiding,’ She straightens, ‘that’s why the blinds are drawn, and—’ She looks down and touches her belly, the aches of absence sharp like the acidic smell of lemons, and something metal catches the light that’s not from his arm.

James touches her face, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be this way.’ His mink fine-eyelashes flutter, in the light of the projection his eyes are impossibly blue: ‘I thought I could protect you this way.’

‘You wiped my memory of them?’

He shakes his head, ‘No, Nadyenka, it’s my fault you had them in the first place.’

The galaxy above her rotates, then expands, as clusters of light representing stars zoom past her face.

‘I was his wife,’ she gasps, tears rolling out of her eyes, ‘we had, we had a daughter! I can’t believe I lost my memories of her — my daughter, her name, her name was…’

_‘Natalia.’_

A sob wracks from her body as metal and flesh arms draw her against the worn fabric of his singlet. ‘That’s how they found out. The program was not able to take your name away from you. Mikhael had asked you to name her, and you had given her the name from your previous life—’

The flood of memories deluges her. She had woken up in hospital, a ballerina by the name of Yelena, with silver blond hair and a back injury which took her dancing career from her. During the process of recovery she grew close to the orderly of her ward. When she recovered, he opened his home to her, and she became his wife.

Their cottage on the outskirts of Moscow was cold and cramped, but she was happy, cooking and cleaning and tending to the trick hip Mikhael had retained when he fought in Kiev. She never questioned her monthly visits to the doctor, or the infrequent fainting spells she would sometimes sustain, always awakening to the smell of citrus. She soon bore a child with Mikhael. On the hospital bed, he had asked her what she should name the reddened, pruning face.

‘Natalia,’ For some reason, whispering that name to the bundle of joy had spread a warmth through her that she only associated with the completeness of motherhood and nothing else.

Their daughter grew up blond, like Mikhael, and her, with green curious eyes that yearned for her embrace. She taught her Russian lullabies about the river, the pear trees, the glaciers in the mountains. The first winter when her daughter turned one, she sat by the window watching the silver snow fall silently in the woods, her daughter in her lap, Yelena’s tears of joy falling uncontrollably into Natalia Petrovsky’s soft curls.

They enrolled Natalia in kindergarten when she turned three. She knew her sums and half of the multiplication table and can read most of the picture book of nursery rhymes by herself. She was a strong skater but a terrible swimmer. She was perfect in every way.

When they came, breaking down that old wooden door to their cottage with quiet precision, Natalia had all but whimpered before she was silenced, forever, by leather gloves over her face.

Yelena ran, and ran, through the woods and the snow, and finally screamed when she jumped into the lake with all her clothing. When she woke up, god knows how much later, she was Natasha Romanoff, who spoke English without an accent, with no trace of blond hair, who had no memories of her daughter or her husband, whose biology had been altered to the point where she could not even engage with the concept of family.

She pushes James away as she bends over the side of the bed, retching and finding nothing inside to expel.

‘Natalia,’ James calls, ‘we don’t have anymore time.’

Natasha stumbles into the bathroom, staring at her auburn coloured hair and ashen face and stained nightgown. She didn’t need a picture to remember her daughter’s trenchant eyes, the eagerness within to know about the world. How could she have thought they’d be able to hide her? One look at that upturned nose, and everyone would know—

_There were more than five hundred counts of Yelena born in the year 1984 alone…_

She walks back into the room. The galaxy above them brightening, the gravity dense centre blinding in yellow light. Natasha pounces, knocking James down onto the wooden floor, grabs James by the neck, her thumbs pressing into his jugular.

‘It was them. They made you do it. They had you kill her.’

The predator comes to life. Blue eyes harden into steel.

‘Why did you save me?!’ Natasha rasps, her vision blurring through her tears. ‘I wanted to be with her!’

James closes his eyes, his whole body shaking beneath Natasha.

‘I couldn’t let you go.’

Natasha tightens her grip, but this is a memory and she knows she’ll never finished the job no matter how hard she squeezes. Maybe his neck had been reinforced with vibranium like his prosthetic arm. And she can’t remember where her gun is hidden in this alien yet familiar memory.

Her knees give out as she collapses on top of him, her hands twitching from overexerted strength: ‘You took my memories of her because it was the only way I’d live. You wiped me because you know I wouldn’t last otherwise, so this shell, this lie of a half-alive puppet can go on killing for you...’

James grips her hand, overpowers her in one swoop, and pins her beneath him, hands above her head in metal grasp.

‘It wasn’t me, Natasha.’

The galaxy above them spirals out of control. Light bouncing and shooting through their bodies. Natasha brackets her legs around his hips, presses against him from ankle to thigh to tummy to chest. But there’s no desire. There’s no tenderness, no intimacy, just the addling emptiness brought on by the knowledge of loss.

 _Please,_ Natasha shivers beneath his weight, heat and chill coursing through her body like she had been dunked into an ice-encrusted lake, _I want to be with her._

Was that what she had begged him to do? Natasha thrashes as she tried to recall how true this emotion is, if this is a part of her memory or just her delayed reaction.

 _Please,_ she pleads, her Russian deteriorating. She hears herself reverting to English. Panics, because the pain is leaving her and she’s afraid of what might be left in place of it.

_I can’t live without her, how did I live for all this time, please, please, please…_

He kisses her, swallows her sobs and screams and quivering. She grips his arm and tries without success to leave marks in the metal.

‘Where is she, James, where did you leave her?’

James cradles her head in his arms, ‘We have no more time.’

She gasps as he starts floating, along with her, the room being consumed by the lights of the projection. Wallpaper peeling in ribbons, furniture disassembling, walls and ceiling fragmenting around them as everything glows orange and starts smelling once again, like citrus.

‘In five minutes, when they come, only I would be in the room. I gave them nothing, and I was punished. Just another reset of the dial.’

She grabs at him but he’s slipping from her grasp: ‘At least you live. At least you’re still alive.’

‘James?!’ Natasha whispers, as he melts into the orange light.

‘In three weeks time, you would’ve found employment in Budapest. By that time no one would ever again associate Yelena with Mikhael, and not even yourself would remember—’

‘Where is she!’ The white burns in its brightness as Natasha grapples at nothing: ‘James! Where did you bury her? Was it in the lake?’

But James has faded, chased away like shadow under surgical light, as Natasha swipes at the wispy shapes as they dissolve around her.

She wakes up in a bed, Shuri leaning over her, T’Challa by her side, garbed in navy robes and amethysts around his neck, the deep colours sharpening as her vision focuses.

Shuri turns to her brother: ‘I told you she would be ok.’

‘Miss Romanoff,’ the King speaks, ‘Are you with us?’

‘Yes,’ Natasha rasps, her voice hoarse.

The siblings sighs of relief are identical.

‘My sister’s actions are reckless and for that—’

Natasha raises her hand. ‘It’s fine, your majesty.’

T’Challa turns to Shuri: ‘You should know better than to use untested technology on our guests, Shuri! We could have caused—’

‘Majesty,’ Natasha says, ‘I knew what I was getting into. I trust her.’

Shuri sticks her tongue out to his brother. Both pause when Steve Rogers, clad in a Wakandan robe of deep umber, walks into the room.

Natasha falls from the bed, the electrodes ripping from her skin. Steve freezes in his steps.

She pulls the remaining wires free from beneath her robes, backs herself against the window-wall of the infirmary, the glass reflecting the lights of the med-station. Natasha can’t determine whether the glass has been blacked out or if she’s leaning against a window looking out into the inky night.

‘Natasha, I—’

Natasha slides down to the floor, shaking.

Shuri brings a blanket from the bed as T’Challa steps in front of Steve.

‘Maybe this is not the best time to visit.’ He says as Natasha pulls the blanket over her entire frame, above her face, shrouding her head in it, knowing it did nothing to hide her trembling.

* * *

5.

The toner turns her hair purple before it finally settles into platinum after repeated rinses. She stares at her own reflection, blanking on the lack of familiarity.

She clumsily follows a video tutorial from a series called _‘Fifty hairstyles from the Fifties’_. By the time she’s done, her victory rolls are lopsided, threatening to fall into her face, and the rest of her hair fizzes up.

She smoothes a hand down the side of her temple, brushing her fingers across the tapered brows.

‘Yelena.’ She says what was once her own name, of which she no longer knows the sound.

The image stares back at her. The hair dryer lying against the mirror betrays her current time and place.

She stows it along with the hair products in the cabinet beneath the sink, until nothing is on the vanity, but the reflection in the mirror framed by LED lights of the touch tech in this ensuite bathroom of the guest room in the royal residence, still looks false.

Natasha strips until she’s in her SHIELD issue undergarments, continues, freeing her flesh from the man-made material.

There is still too much modernity: stitches too small to be sewn by technology of the post-war Soviet, bullet scar too precise to be a battle scar left behind by the war.

Natasha touches her stomach, right below her belly button. Disguise is something that comes naturally to her. But trying to find the truth, trying to reconcile her outer appearance with trauma and loss, evoking experiences and emotions of the past. That part has been taken from her, supplanted with rage, and inertia, anxiety.

_Take you out, put something else in._

_You and I remember Budapest very differently._

Of course, because her memories of Budapest are fabricated. By the time Clint had found her, she had gone through so many cycles she no longer had the capacity to solidarily recall the past.

A pale white neck beneath her own gloves, skin alabaster and tender. Tears falling upon worn leather, wrinkled hide against youthful flesh.

She hugs herself as she sits down on the edge of the bathtub. Her undergarments lying beside her feet in a heap, reminding her of the many shells she does not remember shedding.

The sheets are too smooth to be Soviet produced linen. The air blowing across her skin too soothing to be the chill from the red room. There are no bars on the bed frame, nothing to remind her of the single cot she was given, or that permanently dark and mildewy cottage in rural Moscow, or that sanctuary in the middle of the town hidden behind a restaurant smelling like cabbage soup.

Does it matter? What she remembers, what she does not?

She presses her palms against the cushioned headboard above her. In her peripheral vision she sees strands of silver hair splaying across the grey pillowcase as she stretches her body along the length of the cooling breeze, and lets out a sob.

My pain, the last part I thought they couldn’t steal, my loss. They took all of it.

And now there was just this shell of a human body, its trainings and instincts untraceable.

A gun has no assigned personality, it shoots where it’s directed.

And the ammunition that leave its barrel, never had any say about its trajectory.

Shuri points to the lines of data across her screen. ‘This is the record I kept of your vitals through the EKG monitoring, Miss Romanoff. Unlike BARF, whatever you see with the help of the leaf is between yourself and the plant.’

Natasha nods: ‘Well, you’ll need more monitoring than that for Barnes.’

Shuri turns to the door when the guards change their formation. ‘You can let him in.’ She said, gesturing to the guards, who part to reveal Steve Rogers at the doorway.

‘I wanted to—’

Shuri looks to Natasha, Natasha bites back a smile. ‘It’s your lab, princess.’

Shuri grins: ‘How do I know he is not a spy.’

Natasha doesn’t hold back her answering grin: ‘Because he would be terribly bad at it.’

Shuri giggles, ‘Very well, you can come in, bad spy.’

Steve looks sheepish, but he steps forward anyway. Natasha moves so Steve has a view of the screen. ‘We’re looking at EKG data from my session under.’

Shuri points. ‘Miss Romanoff posits that we may be able to use this technology to suppress mental conditioning, maybe even reverse it all together.’

Steve stares, ‘You mean, you mean to say that we can use this on…’

In the blue light Natasha cannot see one single visible pore on Steve’s skin as he leans forward to study the screen.

Natasha’s lips quiver as she suddenly recalls a previously insignificant detail: ‘He talked about you, you know.’

Steve stiffens.

‘He couldn’t remember your name, but the few times he told me stories of his youth, they were stories of mischief that could not have been committed by a sole person.’ She offers him a smile, ‘To a girl who only knew of beds with handcuffs and grueling dance practices, that little corner of Brooklyn sounded like the best place to grow up.’

Steve straight up gapes. ‘Bucky?’ he whispers, after a while.

‘I’ll give you two a moment.’ Shuri says.

Natasha stops her. ‘No, this is your lab, and I don’t think you need me anymore. Come, Steve, we’ll talk somewhere else.’

Steve leans against the entryway after he closes the door behind him.

‘You’re leaving,’ he observes.

She doesn’t have much belongings to begin with and now with them all packed up the room looks untouched.

Natasha nods, sitting down cross-legged on the bed. ‘I’m not one to settle for the agreeable climate, Cap.’ She smoothes a hand down the intricately woven patterns of the blanket, only now noticing that the geometric illustrations are rhinoceroses.

‘Did you,’ Steve swallows, ‘Was it fine for— are you ok now?’

‘I’m not, but I did find what I’d been searching for.’ She offers a smile. ‘Must’ve given you a scare though.’

Steve’s eyes effuse that melancholy blue once again. ‘Natasha—’

‘I’m sorry,’ Natasha says, ‘I shouldn’t have gone off at you like that.’

Steve freezes.

Natasha pats the mattress beside her. Steve tentatively sits on the edge, careful not to settle into the softness. Natasha leans back on her hands. ‘I wasn’t in the right mind space. You didn’t deserve that.’

Steve shakes his head, ‘Nothing you said was untrue.’

Natasha pats the back of his hand. ‘It matters how I said them, Steve. Accept my apology.’

Steve Rogers smiles with down-turned eyes. ‘I forgive you.’ He says, reaching over and giving Natasha an unexpected hug.

Natasha gasps as he squeezes the air out of her.

‘You ever considered going home?’

Steve straightens, letting her go.

‘He’s applied for your pardon as well, Stark, I mean.’

Steve looks at her for a long time.

‘Consider it, Steve, your place in this world is not just a dangling thread.’ Natasha says.

After an eternity, Steve finally lets out a held breath: ‘I gotta see this thing with Buck through. I know you have unfinished business to take care of, for yourself. And the things between you and Buck, well, maybe one day one of you’ll trust me enough to tell me...’

Natasha reaches into her nightstand and retrieves the notebook she had found in Warsaw, and presses it into Steve’s palm. ‘After all this, maybe we’ll all get together and have a drink.’

Behind the reinforced glass, James Buchanan Barnes looks smaller than how she remembered him, like the difference between a live predator and a taxidermied one in a museum. His eyelashes are incredibly long and dense, fanning against his face as he breathes bubbles in the cryo fluid.

Footsteps. Loud on purpose to alert her of another’s presence.

‘My country does not usually extend civilities to the likes of you, Miss Romanoff.’

‘My gratitude for your decision to spare me the claws in that case, your majesty,’ she replies as the figure clad in black emerges from the shadows, ‘It was not my intention to harm or disrupt.’

‘I would not have let you befriend my sister had that been the case.’

She turns, smiling at the sovereign. ‘I appreciate your accommodation.’

T’Challa approaches the tank, ‘You are welcome to stay for as long as you wish, until Barnes awakens, after he has awakened. My sister is quite taken with you.’

Natasha smiles: ‘I’ve always had a way with geniuses. But no, I have unfinished business elsewhere.’

‘I can assist you with arranging your transport.’

Natasha shakes her head, ‘You and your family have helped me more than anyone in the world, your majesty. I know he’s in good hands with Shuri and her tech.’

As if able to hear them, a bubble escapes from Barne’s left nostril, moves along his stubbly cheeks, brushing his eyelashes on its way to the surface.

‘My allies call me T’Challa, Ms. Romanoff.’

‘Very well, my friends call me Nat, T’Challa.’ She taps her finger gently against the curved metal tube. ‘Keep him safe for me, T’Challa.’

T’Challa crosses his arms over his chest in salute, and gives her a slight nod.

The cottage’s backyard had been paved over. It takes her two days to excavate the paving manually. Yelena arrives the morning of the third day while Natasha is knee deep in debris.

‘The neighbours called.’

She says, standing at the backdoor, refusing to approach.

Natasha wipes the sweat from her forehead: ‘Come help me.’

Yelena circles her with slow steps until she catches sight of the hole in the ground and the half buried metal chest.

Together they drag the chest onto the back porch.

Yelena brushes dirt from the plate, uncovering the carved markings. ‘Gamma Delta Epsilon…’ She reads, ‘I don’t understand.’

Natasha jacks the hinges instead of trying to pick the lock. The rusted metal comes apart with ease.

Yelena puts her hand on the lid of the chest.

‘You’re not Miss Rominski, will you tell me your name? Or must I call you my own?’

‘Romanoff,’ Natasha replies.

‘Miss Romanoff, what is going on? Why do you have my dedushka’s ex-wife’s face? How do you know that there’s a chest in this backyard?’

Natasha packs away her tools, smacking the hoe against the porch to shake off the dust. ‘It’s better that you know less, Yelena.’

Yelena shakes her head. ‘You materialised from nowhere. You tracked down my dedushka and now he’s gone from this world. You know your way around guns and secret. You are a splitting image of the woman who disappeared all those decades ago yet you look my age. And now somehow you have come to know of a chest buried beneath this paving that my grandfather put in before I was born, which he has never mentioned. I’m not calling the police, Miss Romanoff, but this is my property, my family, my life. I have a right to know.’

Natasha shook her head, ‘I’m not sure what’s in the chest myself. Until I confirm my suspicions, I can’t give you a coherent answer.’

Yelena looks at her for a long time, before she lifts her hands.

Natasha whispers _‘Spasibo’_ as she opens the lid.

There is no dust on the neatly folded clothing and toy doll and notebooks layered upon the bricks. Natasha, hands shaking, picks up the yellowed booklet. An exercise book, its pages crisp, wrinkling with age, Natasha recognises the childish handwriting of jagged and barely legible lines.

‘Natalia Petrovsky.’

Natasha jolts at the name. Yelena is holding the blond-haired doll, flipping up its waistcoat read the embroidered words sewn on the petticoat.

‘That is so strange,’ Yelena frowns, ‘I don’t recall mother ever having dolls like this.’

Natasha felt a draft run down her neck.

‘Your mother,’ she repeats.

Yelena nods. ‘My mother’s name was Natalia. I came to live with dedushka after she was taken away after the war. I don’t have much memories of her, or my father.’

 _‘It wasn’t me’_ James had said.

Gloved fingers against lotus white neck.

Snow and sunlight and the icy lake.

Natasha puts down the exercise books. The richicheting force of realisation slamming into her like a punch to her gut. The green eyes, the sharp face, the streak of stubborn bravery. Could it be possible that this girl in front of her, this kindergarten teacher who leads a life of normalcy, might be a direct descendent—

Natasha stills and takes in her surroundings: the metal chest with obscure artifacts, the cottage so altered by repairs and renovations, inconsistent memories lacking in coherence. Mikhael never stopped searching for Yelena. _My grandfather refused to name me after my parents._ Natalia Petrovski did not appear in any records. The records themselves are incomplete, lost through time, buried, then paved over.

The ground had hardened due to the onset of winter, and it had taken her well over two days to uncover this chest, which she only managed to correctly deduce after having that talk with the dream version of James, whom she only met after taking that concoction from Shuri. Her year long excavation leading to this point whereby she might be in the presence of her blood. Soon, after Shuri awakens Barnes, she might be presented with a whole new set of data, more paving to dig up, more scabs to pick at...

What use would the confirmation be either way, whether she was related by blood to this girl in front of her who shares one of her names? Would it matter if she had her blood? In her mind, her daughter died in front of her eyes, her motherhood ripped from her by a surgical procedure, familial ties wiped from her brain, and Yelena Belova, Mikhael’s wife, Natalia’s mother, drowned in that frozen lake. Any confirmation would just rub in the fact of that loss, the biology she no longer possesses, her memories robbed from her. And only reaffirm how undeserved she feels to even entertain the possibility that the absence is not as concrete as she makes it out to be in her mind.

No, if this is not the bottom, she is going to stop sinking. Maybe one day, she might be in a position to be able to confront the truth. But right now, she’s content for the name of Yelena to belong to the kindergarten teacher in front of her.

Yelena places the doll back into the chest. Natasha closes the lid. Together they dangle their legs over the porch and look out at the overturned yard and the leafless wood beyond.

The grey of the sky guarantees snow.

‘My full name is Natasha Romanoff.’

Yelena’s head whips around.

Natasha continues: ‘I have a story for you.’

* * *

EPILOGUE

Natasha smells burning flesh. Her eyes are watering from the exposure to the ozone cast off by the explosions and conflagration around her.

This might be the end, with the metal arm draped over her shoulder as she supports his whole body weight. He bleeds on her. Mingling with her own blood, leaking down to mat her blond hair.

She turns his face to hers, and kisses him.

He startles, doesn’t push her away. Then he curls metal fingers around the back of her neck, warmth and familiar smoothness.

 _Not like this,_ Natasha thinks, stroking the beard on the scruffy skin still smelling like the cryo liquid. Not while the world is falling apart. Not with Steve Rogers gawking at the two of them, his back wide open. Not with T’Challa’s army falling one by one in a chorus of vibranium.

Now is not the time. Now is the time to pick up arms and deal with the possible end to everything. Now is the time to clang metal into song.

If only they had more time, if only there were more time.

Then she would be able to tell him exactly who she is. She will teach him to say the name he once uttered in reverence. She will retrieve forgotten memories with him, relearn each other’s body via touch and scent. She will press his palm against her belly, trace his roughened finger along the scar on her stomach, and tell him of the parts of her formed by him.

Resow abandoned fields, maybe even plant a fruiting—

But there is no more time.

* * *

Written as a part of the [Buckynat Mini Bang 2019](https://fuckyeahbuckynatasha.tumblr.com/post/186517277783/welcome-to-the-buckynat-mini-bang-2019-today-is) with art by the amazing [Nocek](https://nocek.tumblr.com/) ([Insta](https://www.instagram.com/after_midnight_doodleness/)) who introduced me to the awesomeness that is _Podstakannik._


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